Iran removes billboard of IDF soldiers
Sign was erected in Shiraz to commemorate ‘martyrs’ of Islamic Republic’s wars
Authorities in Iran put up a billboard with an image of three soldiers for what is called “Sacred Defense Week,” before locals noticed the men depicted were wearing Israeli uniforms and carrying M-16s.
According to locals the billboard was erected in Namazi Square in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz. The billboard had a quote from poet Ali Moalem Damghani, which commemorated “martyrs” from past wars.
Iran’s Defense Week this year has commemorated three decades since the end of the Iran-Iraq war in which hundreds of thousands of Iranians died. “They stare at me, still glorious, I see their shadow on the mountain,” the quote on the billboard said.
The billboard depicted three Israeli soldiers, photoshopped from a photo by Timon Studler that had been uploaded onto the Unsplash. com website. The image was cropped to remove a female IDF soldier. However, the person who made the poster neglected to notice that the soldiers had M-16s – rifles the Iranian army is not equipped with.
The billboard was first photographed by someone with the twitter handle @ Mhrezaa and then spread to several Turkish Twitter accounts. By nightfall, Iranians gathered to photograph the image being removed from the billboard. Two people smiled and gestured to a camera, in an image that was subsequently posted online, evidently mocking the irony of the mistaken placement of the IDF in their city.
Shiraz once had a large Jewish community of over 20,000 people. In the year 2000, 13 Jewish men in Shiraz were accused of spying and put on trial, including a rabbi. Ten were convicted.